Good Time Charly

Warning: The following blog post contains a healthy amount of photos. Our favorites from the summer.

We have not fallen off the face of the earth . . . we've just gone back to school.

Last Monday, Kelli and I dropped Charly off at daycare together and headed to the high school to kick off the year. Monday night, after a day filled with meetings, we were already exhausted, and the school year just began!

I know, all the non-teachers are rolling their eyes, feeling zero remorse for us . . . but this school year, our SEVENTH school year, is different in that we just spent the entire summer with a little girl who is growing into a toddler before our very eyes. After one day of teacher stuff, we missed her already.

Charly adjusted well though. She squealed when we pulled into Mel's driveway (our daycare provider), and she crushed Kelli by wanting to stay at Mel's and play instead of going home to be with us. We realize though, that this is a good problem to have. Mel loves Charly and we couldn't be luckier. While Kelli would love to see her little girl run to her with open arms at the end of the day, it's a different kind of warmth to see her happy and playing on her own. However I may have to start picking her up a few days, as not to crush Kelli's spirit.

Since summer is officially over, we felt it was time for lots of final random summer pictures and random summer notes:

Charly's vocabulary developed this summer. She now says "No". Loud and clear. She says "home" when we pull into our driveway. She calls me "dad" (not "daddy", not this girl) and for a stint this summer we swear she referred to Kelli as "Kel". She says "cat" and "more" and "blue". She loves to say "Owie", even when it doesn't apply to the situation, especially in public when it really doesn't apply to the situation!

She says "Brooks" and "Cooper" and "Grandpa" and "Grandma". She loves "bikes" (she will help me talk Kelli into letting me get a motorcycle one of these days) and she loves to tell Elliot to "move". She loves staring at the "moon" and has all her animal sounds down pat: "moo", "arf", "baa", "oink", and "ooh ooh ah ah" (a monkey). Just this morning she even rambled off more colors we didn't think she knew, "purple" and "pink".

She loves to give us kisses and this summer even turned it into a game. She'd touch our face softly, kiss one of us, then turn to the other chanting "more, more, more" until we would crawl over to her and kiss her. She's recently started this with her stuffed animals as well.

She loves to play in our car. I have to turn off the lights, the wipers, and the radio when we get inside now. We went on lots of walks and played in lots of parks.

She loves to hide (which actually scares us sometimes), she loves to push the shopping cart in the grocery store (which makes grocery shopping not so fun), she loves to color with markers (all over our floor), and she loves to help around the house with chores (usually making more of a mess and drawing out the process).

She loves her family, and bawls when they leave her.

Her favorite thing to do, hands down, is to read books. Kelli and I, two teachers, couldn't be happier. We just wish she'd get a new selection of books to choose from every once in a while! We could sit with her for hours on end, reading books to her, and she would be as content as could be. Her favorites are Go Dog Go, Bears on Chairs, Farm Kisses, Snuggle Puppy, and Jesus Loves Me. They are read over and over and over. She hasn't really graduated from her favorite board books to some of the classic picture books that Kelli and I keep buying for her, but she'll get there soon!

She loves to be outside and would stay out there for hours if we didn't bribe her to come in. Usually upon returning from daycare, we sit outside with her watching her play even more, to avoid a minor meltdown were we to go inside the house! She even started to like the water by the end of summer, something we thought was quite the accomplishment!

Kelli and I both have been blessed with good classes this year, making life all that much easier as we return to work. Plus Fall is both Kelli and I's favorite season and it's just around the corner! As much as we love our summers it's nice to be back to some sort of a routine. It's hard to imagine that next summer, we'll have another little one to tote around!

Oh, had we not mentioned that yet?

13 Going on 30

Well, not quite. She's only 17 months. But I swear, sometimes she gives us a taste of what we're in for when she becomes a teenager.

Take for instance the new habit she formed this week: Lounging around all morning in bed, listening to music on our iPod, not wanting us to talk or look at her.

If boys start calling the house, I'm gonna lose it.

Up All Night

So Kelli and I recently sold the rights to our story to NBC and they are turning it into a 30-min comedy sitcom called Up All Night. Sure Saturday Night Live alum Will Arnett would not have been my first choice to play the role of me but Christina Applegate isn't too far off for Kelli's role.

I'm pretty sure other young couples have seen commercials for the new show and thought to themselves the exact same thing we are! Sure it's not our story but it very easily could be! Take last night for example . . .

9:30 pm - I finally get frustrated with Charly's stubborn refusal to fall asleep so I put her in her crib to cry.

10:00 pm - Charly is finally asleep.

12:00 am - Charly wakes up. Kelli takes her to our bed and she falls back asleep.

1:00 am - I move Charly to her crib.

1:01 am - Charly wakes up screaming. I go in her room.

1:30 am - Charly is still sitting in her crib taking part in an intense staring contest with me. She refuses to sleep. I gave up. Kelli brings a blanket and pillow into the room to sleep with her. They sang songs together for nearly an hour. Still, Charly refuses to sleep.

Sometime between 3:00-4:00 am - Kelli returns to bed.

6:00 am - Charly is up and at 'em! Ready for some breakfast.

This is not our normal nightly routine. Last night was worse than others. But lately she hasn't gone to bed until 9:00-9:30 pm (Kelli deals with that). She usually wakes up once, if not twice, in the middle of the night (I deal with that). And she's usually up by 7:00 am for the day. I can't understand how a person so small can function and operate on so little!

A few weeks ago Kelli and I visited our friends Shawn and Kali while we were up seeing a Twins game. They just had a beautiful new baby girl, Maci Mae, and while we were visiting a nurse stopped by to check in on Kali and Maci (not so much Shawn). She talked to them about many things (that we had heard before from our own nurses), specifically sleeping. She told them to aim for 8 hours of sleep within a 24 hour period. Naps during the day count. I don't think Kelli or I get anywhere near that! And Charly's 17 months old, a far cry from a newborn!

Kelli and I want to get away one last time before school starts up, and take her on a good ole' fashion Midwest family vacation, but now we're scared that we're going to throw her sleeping routine off for good. I guess it can't really be damaged any more than it is now! In fact, she sleeps better in a car than she does in her own crib!

Daddy Ran Another 5K . . .

. . . but he didn't win!

He did shave a few minutes off of his first 5k time though and finished in 25:22! He sure is liking this new hobby.

Let's Go to the Zoo

About a month ago we took Charly on a mini-vacation to Minnesota. On the docket was a Twins game and a trip to the Minnesota Zoo. Charly loves animals and I love the Twins and Kelli went along for the ride!

We timed our departure from Cedar Falls with Charly's afternoon nap, hoping she'd sleep for a good portion of the 3-hour drive. She slept the entire 3-hour drive! She was out cold by the time we pulled onto highway 218 and didn't open her eyes until I put the car into park when we reached our hotel. One thing the girl does well is travel. She's pretty content when we have to drive places.

Call us weird, but one of the things Kelli and I were most excited about was the hotel. We were just extremely curious to see how Charly would act in the hotel. After checking in before the baseball game, I was afraid we weren't going to make the game. She pranced around the room, pounding on the sliding glass door that overlooked the pool, jumping on the bed, bossing us around. She loved it. Here she is planning our route to the zoo the following morning:

I was stressed about taking her to the Twins game. Charly likes to roam. She doesn't really like being carried anymore in public places. She wants to stretch her legs and run. I didn't really know how she would respond to 35,000 people either. We spent one Friday night this summer watching a movie in the park and chasing Charly around while she weaved in and out of stranger after stranger. Plus, we had a camera bag and a diaper bag and her, sitting in the second row of a section 30-40 feet off the ground with not much of a railing. Our arms were full and my stress level was maxed.

The instant she saw the green grass, she pointed and nearly jerked right out of Kelli's arms. "Ball!" she cried. "Ball!" She knew exactly where we were at! She thought she owned the place, running up and down rows of seats before too many fans began to show. Despite my stress, the game with her went fine. She sat on Kelli's lap the majority of the time. She made friends with the lady next to us and she got a little friendly with the young guy in front of her. She loved the train ride in and danced to the music between innings. All in all, it was a great night. The Twins won, battling the Dodgers back and forth for most of the game until Luke Hughes knocked one out over left field, putting the Twins up for good.

She fell asleep so we thought the 8th inning was a good time to bolt, catching the train early so we could get a seat. I hate leaving early but didn't want to be left standing on the train with our arms full. She woke up on the train, was incredibly wet from a too-full diaper, and got a second wind back at the hotel. But finally, between Kelli and I in bed, she settled down and fell asleep exhausted.

The following morning we grabbed breakfast and then Charly and I changed into our swim gear to test out the hotel pool. Charly has liked the water more and more as the summer has gone on. As long as she was in my arms, she was fine. She loved the water guns and the spraying water but when I tried taking her down a slide and lost my balance toward the bottom, she was no longer the biggest fan of the pool. So it was off to the zoo!

We had high hopes for the zoo. Charly absolutely loves animals. She goes nuts for puppies and dogs, she loves cats, and screams while chasing squirrels and rabbits and birds around the yard. We knew she'd love the zoo.

My family went to the Minnesota Zoo a few times when I was younger but it has come a long ways. In fact, when searching Google for the best zoos in the country, the Minnesota Zoo actually popped up on a number of Top 10 lists. More so than the Omaha Zoo, which we had heard was a great one too. The bird cage and the farm had to be Charly's favorite exhibits. They had acres of indoor rain forest where birds actually flew around you. Charly pointed at every single one, even spotting ones hiding in trees that Kelli and I missed. "Bird! Bird!" We let her walk too, as it was early in the morning and not incredibly busy yet.

We trekked outside to a huge farm exhibit. We thought it was a little silly, as we could just head to Allison and find plenty of people willing to let Charly experience some of the same things, but the farm exhibit is fairly new and a lot of money has been spent on it. They have a farmhouse that serves as a deli and ice cream shop and tons of barns housing pigs, cows, chickens, and goats. Kelli and Charly went inside the goat pen and had some fun. Especially when Kelli bought some food for them and was attacked by an army of goats.

Much to my annoyance, we were about two weeks short of the zoos new penguin exhibit being completed. But I picked out a great souvenir for Charly (as you can see below). She actually loves it. It's probably her second favorite stuffed animal right now! We played in the water, found all the Dr. Seuss statues, and I even had a beer (at a zoo!). Who knew they sold beer at the zoo?

Charly is quite the little traveler. It's stressful at times for us because we have to constantly be considering her needs. Does she need to eat? Should she be changed? Is it too hot? Does she need a nap? Will she be scared? Something Kelli and I could do on our own in an hour or two is now a lot of work! But it's totally worth it, providing some experiences for her. I know she'll grow up and probably not remember going to a Twins game or to the zoo with us when she was 16 months old, but we will. We'll remember the excitement on her face and the happiness she felt and know it was worth all the extra work it took to lug around a loaded diaper bag and stroller and baby.